Acts 21:4-25

⁴Someone told us where the believers in Tyre lived, so we (exc) went and stayed with them for seven days. Because God's Spirit revealed to them ◄ that people would cause Paul to suffer/Paul would suffer► in Jerusalem, they told Paul that he should not go there.

⁵But when it was time for the ship to leave again, we prepared to continue going to Jerusalem. When we left Tyre, all the believers, including their wives and children, went with us to the edge of the sea. We all knelt down there on the sand/shore and prayed.

⁶After we all said goodbye, Paul and we his companions got on the ship, and the other believers returned to their own homes.

⁷After we (exc) left Tyre, we continued on that ship to Ptolemais city. There were believers there, and we greeted them and stayed with them that night.

⁸The next day we left Ptolemais and sailed to Caesarea city, where we stayed in the home of Philip, who spent his days telling others how to become disciples of Jesus. He was one of the seven men whom the believers in Jerusalem had chosen to care for the widows.

⁹He had four daughters who were not married. Each of them frequently spoke messages that the Holy Spirit had revealed to them.

¹⁰After we(exc) had been in Philip's house for several days, a believer whose name was Agabus came down from Judea district and arrived in Caesarea. He frequently spoke messages that the Holy Spirit had told him.

¹¹Coming over to where we were, he took off Paul's belt. Then he tied his own feet and hands with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘The Jewish leaders SYN in Jerusalem will tie up the hands and feet of the owner of this belt, like this, and they will hand him over to non-Jewish people as a prisoner.’”

¹²When the rest of us heard that, we and other believers there repeatedly pled with Paul, “Please do not go up to Jerusalem!”

¹³But Paul replied, “◄Please stop crying and trying to discourage me IDM from going!/Why are you crying and trying to discourage me IDM from going?► RHQ I am willing to be put { for people to put me} in prison and also to be killed { for them to kill me} in Jerusalem because I serve MTY the Lord Jesus.”

¹⁴When we(exc) realized that he was determined to go to Jerusalem, we did not try any longer to persuade him not to go. We said, “May ◄the Lord God do what he wants/the Lord's will be done►!”

¹⁵After those days in Caesarea, we (exc) prepared our things and left to go by land up to Jerusalem.

¹⁶Some of the believers from Caesarea also went with us. On the way to Jerusalem, we stayed one night in the house of a man whose name was Mnason. He was from Cyprus Island, and he had believed in Jesus when people were first beginning to hear the message about him.

¹⁷When we arrived in Jerusalem, a group of the believers greeted us happily.

¹⁸The next day Paul and the rest of us went to speak with James, who was the leader of the congregation there. All of the other leaders/elders of the congregation in Jerusalem were also there.

¹⁹Paul greeted them, and then he reported all of the things that God had enabled him to do among the non-Jewish people.

²⁰When they heard that, James and the other elders said, “Praise the Lord!” Then one of them said to Paul, “Brother/Friend, you (sg) know that there are very many thousands of us (inc) Jewish people here who have believed in the Lord Jesus. Also, you know that we (inc) all continue very carefully to obey the laws that Moses gave us.

²¹But our fellow Jewish believers have been told {have heard people say} that when you are among non-Jews, you tell the Jewish believers who live there that they should stop obeying the laws MTY ◄ of Moses/ that Moses received from God►. People say that you tell those Jewish believers not to circumcise their sons and not to practice our other customs. We(exc) do not believe that this is true.

²²But our fellow Jewish believers will certainly hear that you have arrived, and they will be angry with you. So you need to do something RHQ to show them that what they heard about you is not true.

²³So you should do what we suggest to you. There are four men among us who have strongly promised to God about something.

²⁴Go with these men to the Temple and ritually purify yourself along with them. Then, when it is time for them to offer the sacrifices for that ritual, pay for what they offer as sacrifices. After that, they can shave their heads to show that they have done what they promised to do. And when people see you in the courts of the Temple with those men, they will know that what they have been told {what people have told them} about you is not true. Instead, all of them will know that you obey all our Jewish laws and rituals.

²⁵As for the non-Jewish believers, we elders here in Jerusalem have talked about which of our laws they should obey, and we (exc) wrote them a letter, telling them what we decided. We wrote that they should not eat meat that people have offered as a sacrifice to any idol, that they should not eat blood from animals, and that they should not eat meat from animals that people have killed by strangling them. We also told them that they should not have sex with someone to whom they are not married.”